Who’s ready to go hang out in virtual reality? Deadline reports that there’s a series adaptation of Tad Williams’ four-book Otherland series in the works—and it has a pretty impressive roster of SFF-experienced folks behind the scenes. The Wheel of Time executive producer Mike Weber and Platige Image, the studio behind The Witcher, are among those developing Williams’ “epic cyberpunk-fantasy adventure.”
It’s interesting that this is the Tad Williams work in development, and not his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, which Samuel Chapman described as “the natural successor to Game of Thrones.” But we are in a fantasy boom, and given that the Otherland books bridge fantasy and technology, perhaps this seems like the practical next big thing, a crossing point between Westworld and Westeros.
Here is the (very long!) synopsis of City of Golden Shadow, the first Otherland book:
Otherland. Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth’s most valuable resource—its children.
Only a few have become aware of the danger. Fewer still are willing or able to take up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm. But every age has its heroes, and unusual times call for unusual champions:
Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life simply to get by. She has never wanted to be a hero. But when her young brother is struck down by a bizarre and mysterious illness, Renie swears to save him. When people around her begin to die, she realizes she has stumbled onto something she is not meant to know, a terrifying secret from which there is no turning back.
!Xabbu is a Bushman, come to the city to learn skills which may save the spirit of his tribe. With the heart of a poet and the soul of a shaman, he will journey with Renie on this quest into the very heart of darkness.
Paul Jonas is lost, seemingly adrift in space and time. As he flees from the bloody battlefields of World War I to a castle in the sky, and onward to lands beyond imagining, he must not only evade his terrifying pursuers, but solve the terrible riddle of his own identity.
Fourteen-year-old Orlando is also the invincible barbarian Thargorm, but only in his imagination. However, youth and frailty are not enough to get you excused from saving the world.
And Mister Sellars, a strange old man on a military base, a prisoner of both the government and his own body, may be the greatest mystery of all. Is he part of The Grail Brotherhood? Does he oppose them? Or, as he sits like a spider at the center of a vast web, does he have ambitions of his own?
The answers will only be found in Otherland.
Weber told Deadline, “I believe Tad has written the definitive work on the conflict between the human experience and technological advancements. He depicts a not-so-distant future where the choice between living in the real or the virtual world becomes a choice between life or death. The prescient themes and fantastic characters give Otherland all the foundations of a next-level sci-fi drama series adaptation.”
The producers are “in the process of interviewing writers/showrunners,” so presumably there will be more news on Otherland soon.
